Have a look at your browser’s address bar – your sight is just fine. You actually are on orenyomtov.com as opposed to this morning, when this website lived under the .info TLD.
It has been quite a long time since I made the decision to move to the new domain. But there were two drawbacks which delayed the domain transfer. The first one is lack of time, and the second one is… Well, my laziness.
Anyways, I thought I would share some of the steps I took in order to move the website to the new domain. I was lucky enough that I didn’t have to change hosts. Doing that may have required some additional steps.
- I bought the new domain and linked it to my hosting.
- I downloaded the latest WordPress installation and uploaded it into the new domain by FTP (Looking for an FTP client?).
- I copied the
wp-contentfolder. And in my case, the “downloads” folder which is the folder I chose to store the uploads in (Default iswp-content/uploads). - I also copied the
wp-config.phpfile and the.htaccessfile. - I used the Search and Replace WordPress plugin to replace “orenyomtov.info” with “orenyomtov.com” in the database.
- I notified Google of the domain change in Google Webmaster Tools.
- I exported a new sitemap using the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin and submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools.
- I opened a new Google Analytics account and deployed the new tracking code in the theme I copied in step 3.
- I edited the old .htaccess file to contain only:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://orenyomtov.com/$1 [R=301,L] - I updated my FeedBurner account and all other similar services.
- I updated my website to the new URL in all of my favorite social platforms (@orenyomtov) and forums.
- Twit twit.
- And then I began writing this post.
The move didn’t take as long as I expected it to take. Even though it does seem a little complicated after writing it all down.
I hope that your move will be as smooth as mine. Good luck, Oren.
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Comments
Leave a Reply
Travis Sedore (1 comments) on 01.22.2010
Solid post Oren, keep providing us with awesome, usable info!
Tal (4 comments) on 01.23.2010
Hey Oren, you did it in the best possible manner – in the way that I wouldn’t do it. :-)
And hey, If you have some free time I will recommend you to also let the other search engine to know about your website – Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx , http://www.bing.com/webmaster & Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Oren Yomtov (36 comments) on 01.23.2010
I do not like submitting my website to search engines. It’s best for them to find it on their own. There are several articles that support this.
What I did on Google Webmaster Tools was using their built in tool for URL changing.
Tal (4 comments) on 01.23.2010
That is an interesting way to think about the indexing subject.
And what about the robots.txt file, does it changed automatically during the WordPress configuration? What part of the system is responsible to this file?
Oren Yomtov (36 comments) on 01.23.2010
The WordPress core functionality has nothing to do with the robots.txt file.
There are several plugins that can create it for you. Or you can manually create and upload it.
My robots.txt file was created by the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin.